05/07/08
Text: Bryan Hood, Chau Tu, Nik Mercer
Photographers: Alexander Wagner
High Places
Since meeting in 2006 High Places' Mary Pearson and Rob Barber have been been creating music that defies categorization. The group produces a sound that manages to be everything at once; simple yet complex, unique but vaguely familiar. The one thing that can definitely be said about the group's music is that it is unique, and that is meant in the very best way.
The most striking aspect of High Places' music is the sense familiarity that drips from each song. The tracks that fill 03/07-09/07, the closest thing the band has to a full-length release, are filled with the organic sounds that haunt every day life. In a lesser group's hands this would be boring, but Rob and Mary instead manage to turn it into something beautiful. It is because the music is pure and playful, resulting in a sound completely lacking pretense. Song meander on at their own pace, Barber's ambient backing occasionally bumping into Pearson's ghostly vocals. Muffled sounds and echoes peacefully drift along managing to feel both haphazard and remarkably precise at the same time. Its dream like stuff and that is just the way High Places wants it. B.H.
